This invention relates to a method of updating, maintaining and verifying contact information for various contacts held in a database and more particularly to an automated method of maintaining the contact information fields within a contact database without requiring an individual to manually update same.
In the past, people have maintained contact lists on paper. The proverbial xe2x80x9cblack bookxe2x80x9d is a good example of a list of individuals and their contact information. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon that upon attempting to contact someone one discovers that the information is no longer accurate. This is of tremendous inconvenience, especially during emergency or time limited situations. Unfortunately, the task of maintaining a large contact list current is often too onerous for the few times one needs to contact each individual.
Therefore, whenever someone changes address, phone numbers or any other piece of contact information, there is a necessity for them to provide their contacts with the most current contact data. Conventional methods of accomplishing this task include sending updated information by email, via facsimile, or even by telephoning to contacts in an address book and making others aware that some information has changed and they need to manually update their contact list, which is time consuming.
A service offering automated updating of electronic contact information and ensuring most current contact information is offered by PeopleStreet through their World Wide Web site PeopleStreet.com. PeopleStreet addresses the difficult task of enabling people to stay connected to their many circles of contacts. The service provided by PeopleStreet manages the personal information and provides a dynamic link to all personal and professional relationships. This is performed by providing a method for each user to update their own address book entry, thereby automatically updating all the other user contacts of their new address book entry, wherever they may be.
Although the service that PeopleStreet provides does automate this tedious process, it does require that each party is a member of the service. In this manner information is updated from and to all parties subscribed to the service. This facilitates updating your personal information and being updated of others. A shortcoming of the method is that members of the address book, which are not already subscribed, still have to manually inform the subscribed user of their updated contact information according to the prior art updating method.
Contact.com also offers a similar type of contact service, which provides for the exchange of personal information. Once again, subscribed users decide which of their contacts are privileged to which information fields and as a result when the contact changes their personal information all the other address books linked to the contact are updated. This form of service requires the information to be stored on a central storage system. Although security may be strictly enforced, there are still security concerns because all personal information is accessible from outside the server.
It would be highly advantageous to provide a method for updating contact information in an automated fashion absent either security concerns or mandatory subscription to a service by each party within a given contact list.
The present invention seeks to automate the task of maintaining an up to date electronic contact address book. Advantageously the invention only requires membership by one user, enabling them to have their contact information automatically maintained. Provisions are made for an optionally installed program on the contact computer system allowing for the automatic maintenance of contact request messages sent from the user to the contacts such that contacts do not feel bombarded by the periodic messages sent by the user to ascertain the validity of the contact information.